You may not have heard of the ‘Opiate Dependent Prisoner Litigation Scheme’, if so, let me enlighten you.

This is a scheme where yet more criminals get yet more free cash from the tax payer.

In this case it relates to prisoners who have been awarded up to £4,000 in compensation. These prisoners were/are heroin addicts who were forced to go ‘cold turkey’ when they were imprisoned & their methodone treatment was withdrawn.

The government had, until their imprisonment, been funding their methodone which is a heroin substitute designed to gradually wean addicts off heroin & stop their need to to commit crime to fund the purchase of heroin.

In May 2006, the High Court ruled that withdrawing their methodone was a breach of their human rights. The government have paid out £750,000 compensation to 197 inmates. Following the court decision the tax payer has now funded 9,250 inmates’ methodone at a cost of up to £15,000 per course.

I wonder of the founding fathers of the Human Rights Act envisaged that it would have such far reaching consequences & would actually protect those who seek to break the law more than it does everyone else in society?